Et In Arcadia Ego

Actually, I've never been happier.

Media - movies, novels and "true life narratives" - give drugs a pretty bad rap. My favourite of them is probably Harvey, a charming fifties comedy about a woman whose attempts to marry off her ward well are continually scuppered by her mad alcoholic uncle and his invisible rabbit friend. Presumably the link between bohemians, depression and creation means that most creative enterprises would naturally champion an unhappy individuality over dull contentment.
Perhaps this is accurate - I've heard mixed reviews from real people too.

...the thing is, at present, I'm not really enjoying anything, I don't have the motivation to work either at uni or on my own projects and I keep feeling unmotivatedly tense and threatened when out with friends and family. All things I've experienced fairly more often than I'd like throughout my life, but over the past few months I've had all three at once and pretty constantly. Once you've got work, play and socialisation out of the window, then I'm willing to give anything a go regardless of what the cinema says. This is especially true when you think my antipathy towards chemical solutions extends as far as paracetemol.

I think the "talking treatment" is very useful, especially for me in particular whose main problem is being bad at talking to people - peverse, I know! Perhaps "bad at communicating" would be a more accurate, Personal Life Skills way of expressing it. The problem is, after a point all it can do is shift these horrific soul-destroying feelings onto someone you care about ("It is the fault of X and Y, because...") or at you personally ("I'm sorry, you simply can't cope with leaving the house because that's just what you're like.") Now, perhaps I'm an inherently useless person and all my friends and family are heinous harpies - but it doesn't seem likely. And even if that is the case, it's hardly a positive step in the right direction. Encouragingly, my GP also seemed to think that three years of counselling was too long without a practical boost as well.

So if you were to ask me when the last time I felt really, really happy I'd actually say recieving a nice shiney box of Citalopram yesterday afternoon. Which testifies to placebo power if nothing else - it's always easier to feel better about anything when you're working towards a solution. Hope is good enough, in the absence of Better.

Mind you, I'm having second thoughts since seeing the side effects list which, as my doctor warned me, is "as long as my arm". Not quite true. It's as long as my elbow to my fingertips, which is still pretty damn long.

In some cases, there's nothing to worry about. 1 in 10 patients experience:

• sleepiness, difficulty sleeping
• reduction in weight, gain in weight
• increased appetite, loss of appetite

Just so long as I get all six. Additionally, there is less than a 1 in 10 chance I will experience
menstrual pain. Impressively, there is also a 1 in 10 chance I will suffer impotence or erectile disfunction - frankly a miracle of modern science, as that's statistically far higher than me suffering either at present.

Of course, it's not all good news. There is only less than 1 in 100 chance that I will experience:

• a state of optimism, cheerfulness and well-being (euphoria)
  

and then only as a side effect, which is rather demoralising when you think about it. 1 in 100 people also experience a "general feeling of being unwell", although how that's not already covered by the previous six paragraphs of runny nose, fits and tics, ringing ears, slowing heartbeat, liver problems, coughing, muscle pain, allergic reaction, headache, dizziness, swearing, lethargy, weird dreams, memory loss e.t.c. I'm not sure.

On the rarest end of the spectrum - less than 1 in 10,000 - I may experience "loss of contact with my own personal reality". What that might do to me in particular I daren't speculate. Possibly relocate my own personal reality, profile stalk and invite it out for an awkward catchup coffee...

One of the coolest things about Christmas isn't aquiring loads of stuff, it's looking at it all at the same time and thinking "yes, this is who I am - all my different interests represented in one place". This is possibly even worse, as it suggests things about being trapped in a consumer society where it is pleasurable to define myself through material items. I don't know.

It was also kinda satisfying to be getting this stuff while my sister was aquiring new make-up brushes, perfume, and the rest, and feeling all smug about getting the best set of presents, which is of course what tends to happens when people have picked things for you in particular.

For posterity, here is a map of my stash. Very indulgent of me. But only self-indulgent people keep blogs anyway...

The Gathering (Doctor Who audio play, woo, with Five and Tegan)

"Conspiracy Theories" (Jamie King) - A short paperback encyclopedia with all the famous theories broadly stroked in two short pages. Especially satisfying watching them dodge potential libel claims ("A certain Japanese animated children's show caused epileptic fits when a major animal character emitted electricity..."). Not thorough, but a nice interest-piquer that keeps tempting me towards the web for - snort - proper indepth research

An "Emily" car-style plate - I'm sure I'll find a use for it somewhere. For now, I'm mostly interested that both mine and Oceanic's are pink. One wonders, had we been named Dylan and Boris, whether they would have been blue...

The Indispensable Book of Practical Life Skills - oh hahahahahahhahaha. Ha. Ironically, the tips on getting heat stains out of wood have already mentally come in handy for the mess on the Acton dining room table. I also find the baby-care chapter encouraging: the models are both male and female. Incidentally, not to sound like a Livejournal polemic or anything, but the only public place I've ever found with baby-change facilities in the men's toilets is the V&A.

Origami to Astonish and Amuse - a.k.a. the book I haven't shut up about since borrowing last month. I'm loving my very own copy :)

A hat - not just any hat. A multicoloured neon rasta-hat. Oh yeah. You're all going to be begging me to appear in public with you with this hat.

A kinder-egg santa - who's actually still in his wrapping because he got a bit crushed in the sleigh.

Total Film - all worth it for two tiny promo-pictures that confirm yes, Holmes 2 is a go. Well, one tiny promo picture repeated twice. Sucker Punch is on the cover, and I once again have to wrestle with conflicting emotions about it. A young girl in the 50s is trying to escape an asylum before she is lobotomised, with the help of four friends, an overactive imagination and buckets of carnage. I love films about all those things, and particularly ones which trouble the fantasy/reality line. Unfortunately, the central cast look like this:...which makes me hope it won't be as potentially misogynistic as it looks. Director Zack Snyder, of Watchmen and 300, isn't known for his progressive gender relations. And my feminist objectivity is a bit complicated by the cast - Carla Gugino, Jena Malone and Emily Browning playing ("Babydoll"), hell, even Vanessa Hutchens...in short, skimpy objectification couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of actresses. I'll wait for the first reviews, I think.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (Elizabeth Smart) - George Barker was married, he had an affair with Elizabeth Smart. It went horribly wrong, and they both wrote novels about it. Marvellous literary bitch-off! It's looking pretty pretentious, and is encouragingly short :)

Doctors 9, 10, 11 and the Master in metal miniature - I have all the Doctors for my game now! Charmingly, they also popped a drumstick lollypop into the box.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - in English, but from South Africa.

Classical Film Violence - A great, great book. I borrowed it from the Maughan, but I like having my own copy for reference. I have problems reading the spoilery sections, so I can go back to it as I watch through the films.

Woodwork Jet Fighter - punishment, I think, for trying to get the equipment to carve a dragon after reading a beginner's-guide. Looks awesome! The box claims that age 5-7 "I may need some help!" but 8-12 "I can do it!". I wonder what tips they have for 21?

Adam Adamant Lives! - Victorian Adventurer Revived Fights Crime In The 60s. Nuff said. Probably a disaster waiting to happen, as just so much of it is missing as 1960s television tends to be. It's like actually presenting your heart to be broken. But...he has a sword cane <3

As for the rest:

Grandma - slippers (Servalan style), scarf and hat + a contribution to the piano fund

Grandad - one of those electronic photo-frames. I've always wanted one, but never quite enough to get one so having the excuse is wonderful. I'm thinking of ripping some avant-garde and looping it, as it also plays music and film. Plus a Lord of the Rings, at long last my own copy, in lieu for my birthday.

Oceanic - a harmonica! She has expressed a worry that everyone else is going to hate her now, which could be correct - I love playing it, and have nowhere to practice. Unsurprisingly as even good harmonica players sound like noise. Even better: it's a C-major harmonica, which for the non-music-savvy, means it can't play anything sinister, sad or the Stella Artois theme tune i.e. anything with a bit of subtelty or tact. No, it's major songs only - pop goes the weasel, anything by Bob Dylan. Jaunty, chirpy, irritating noise. I love it! Can already play The Times They Are A Changing, Three Blind Mice, Blowin' in the Wind and, my fave, Dixie. Also a box of "tiddly dark choc reindeers", as she accurately mentioned I like dark chocolate, but only in very small doses.

Parents - a bum bag. Laugh all you like, but I've wanted one for ages. Shall be packing it with essentials - a London map, a spoon ("Make you look like a heroin addict," mum has commented). Plus a donation to the piano fund, which stands at:

50 (parents)
41 (aunts birthday)
60 (grandma birthday and xmas)
= 150, towards aquiring, moving and tuning a piano. I especially love the actual voucher itself -the silhouetted pianist looks just like me - swooping hair, and a natty jacket complete with huge ruffles.

Boif - a pack of lindor chocolates-with-chocolate. He provided the present of the day, probably, in a huge teddy for Oceanic.

Wonderful year!

Best Hamlet ever.

I mean, he's not "my Hamlet", not wholly. If I could act, and the stage was mine, then my Hamlet would be ruthlessly intelligent, incisive, cruel, a scholar out of his depth in events he couldn't rationalise, and always, the only person laughing at his own jokes. And also, a pretty, gangly indie-boy of some sort. I'm not sure Rory Kinnear would obviously tick any of those boxes - he doesn't even find his jokes funny - and perhaps that's indicative of the differences between how Hamlet is percieved as a character, and how he is on the page.

I've just been to the National Theatre, within spitting-distance of the stage, and am about to give a nauseatingly positive review. I'm also about to try and defend that statement above, which wasn't true until I started writing, and discovered it absolutley was.

Often in Hamlet, an individual scene will fail because it just doesn't gel with the actor's interpretation. They'll be subtle, upset, cold - the early scenes offer an almost unlimited range. Unfortunately, that's not true of the second act, so you'll get them suddenly ramping up to 200MPH because the script seems to demand anger - the nunnery, the closet, and the crocodile scenes particularly. It seems jarring and forced in comparison to what has come before.

The graveside most of all: Hamlet has just come back from England in disguise and stumbled on Ophelia's funeral. He abandons his secrecy to pick a fight with Laertes, her brother, because he's pissed off that Laertes is sad. It's inconsiderate - of course Laertes is unhappy that his sister is dead. It's unmotivated - who exactly is he angry at here? It doesn't necessarily tally with the information we've been given - like, no other evidence at all that he cares for Ophelia at all. It's unforgiveably rude - Hamlet has killed Laertes' father, and also been the two chief factors in Ophelia's death. Plus, it's a weird scene which involves the two leads leaping into a grave and playing tug-o-war over a body, with one of them claiming he could eat a crocodile like it's the biggest boast of manliness instead of just a bizzare mental image.

In short, it always makes Hamlet look like a shit and it always comes off as out of character and weird. And that's the problem with gangly indie-boys - unless that's already a note in their character, they seem out of it. Not Kinnear. He's just so unhappy and angry, pain and supressed rage all the way through, that for the first time ever, this scene hasn't seemed terrible in every way. Instead, Laertes just becomes a cathexis for his misdirected rage, just as Polonius, Ophelia and Gertrude have in those other awkward scenes. And they all work so well because those other, early scenes in which others have depicted him struggling to cope merely with despair, he was trying to find a way to bear his anger. Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that the soliloquies were for once the weak spots, compared to how wonderful the ensemble scenes were. Even "oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!", where it is textual fact that Hamlet flies into a rage at himself, and then is ashamed of his inability to control his emotions, too often comes off as the exception (I'm suddenly ANGRY! And now normal service has been resumed) instead of the rule (I'M ANGRY I'M ANGRY, AND SUDDENLY I'M SO ANGRY I CAN'T COPE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA CALM - I'M JUST ANGRY).

This doesn't make it in any way one-note, I mean this is a properly awesome and subtle rage that works alongside the character's melancholy, and intelligence, and humour, but that also works textually without having to jettison anything as part of a perfect character. And that makes the show as a whole more downbeat, because you are never in any doubt of just how much pain he is in. He has the most wonderful fake smile that's almost worse: the humour is properly humourless. A few people tried laughing at the gravediggers' scene, but only because they thought they should.

It's also the first time in some time I've seen a properly cracky Hamlet, and this also works. I like subtle Hamlets, but it's always too obvious that they are calculating and sane - the jokes too funny, the audience too in cahoots in comparison with the oblivious fellow characters. Many Hamlets are just too civilised to "go full retard"; and also, to be properly evil. I rarely believe it when he coldly sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern off to their deaths, but this production in particular he's unreasonable enough that I understand why it would seem reasonable.

With all that seething anger, you'd wonder how he managed to stretch revenge out to 3-hours-30, so it's time to introduce this production's other ace: the design. Aaaah, beautiful - almost chronologically, I've seen more and more emphasis put on the paranoia of Elsinore, and this is the best I've ever seen. A band of suited security men haunt the stage; in the background during soliloquies, hanging about when Hamlet is trying to talk plans with friends. He is constantly being watched, guarded or followed, and the same is true of the Ophelia and everyone else. The stark sets were topped off with CCTV cameras. The oft-cut scene where Polonius engages Reynaldo to go to France and spy on his son seemed suddenly at home in this horrific context. It's clearly impossible for Hamlet to get anywhere near Claudius.

In fact, this production seems to have addressed my usual quibbles with an almost terrifying accuracy. In the second act, they pack Hamlet off stage for about eight scenes. He's such a driving force, and the scenes he's absent for are so...unspecial, that I never really enjoy Act II as much. Laertes returns and shouts, Ophelia spends two awful scenes going mad, Gertrude delivers an overly-famous speech which always seems forced, and then there's the crocodile scene.

It zipped by! That was helped by the most perfect, wonderful Laertes - a character who too often defaults to "prat", and is then an irritating companion the entire time our hero is out of the way. I can't put my finger on what was so special about this one. Perhaps because Hamlet was so angry, Laertes couldn't be, I don't know. He came across as very sincere, properly sympathetic - a nice, straightforward guy who's completely gullible. A perfect Laertes went some way towards diminishing my Act II boredom.

The same can almost be said of Ophelia, almost. She was one of the best I have ever seen - not sanctimonious, and realistically cowed into misery by the oppressive castle atmosphere. I am now entirely convinced, however, that Ophelia is unplayable and the weakest element of an otherwise watertight play. She has no development, she's very difficult for any sane feminist to approach and totally lacks psychological realism. The relationship between her and Hamlet is a textual black hole, and we have to believe she goes properly nuts just because all her male authority figures have been taken away.

One of the remarkeable things about Shakespeare is how sophisticated and universal his writing is. His dialogue actually contains psychological depth, centuries before the actor's method was invented. Ophelia is a big exception to this: the pathos of the virgin maid singing bawdy pastorals is a 16th century sort of understanding of the human brain. When Hamlet explains:

I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me.

I'm sure we've all had days like that. And it struck me now, more than ever, how perfect so many of Hamlet's descriptions of despair are. I've never seen someone express mental illness through tragic, accusing folk tunes before - the scenes are awkward to play because they're awkwardly written, and Ophelia is treated like some sort of reverent, knowing symbol of something throughout. No, the sound of a sweet voice singing is not enough to bring me to tears. Or move me. Or anything. "Here, have a metaphor!"

Which is why I'm kinda glad they neutralised the stomach-turning description of the world's most beautiful suicide by having Ophelia secretly dragged off by security guards, and Gertrude aware that Claudius arranged to have her done away with. It was fun to see Claudius played as a downright villain again - I like him sympathetic, but this was a nice change. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern too where pretty nasty pieces of work - this too made sense in context. Gertrude was the modern performance you recognise of a frazzled career woman clutching a red wine - very good. I particularly enjoyed the closet scene - she becomes hysterical at the moment Polonius is killed and remains so for that reason because that's what murders to do people. It's so easy for the actors to forget the corpse...and I now think, in contrast with Ophelia, Polonius is impossible to play badly, perhaps because it's always the most experienced actor on stage taking on a pretty easy role. Downsides? Horatio. Wasn't special, and delivered the lines as if they were Sha-hakes-speah, but you can't win them all.

Onto the specifics: the ghost scenes are just splended! Very creepy - the actor sounded like he had reverb or something, but I knew he didn't. And spoke very quietly, but seemed to boom at the same time - most special. Hamlet's small shadow, as he slumped at the corner of the stage, dwarfed by his father's huge one. Hamlet just crying, as well you might, while the Ghost explained the circumstances of his death. And actually, every time the Ghost walked across stage, and you could see him there white against the darkness, before the lights acknowledged he was there: creepy! I've already mentioned Ophelia's unusual death; I also enjoyed the opening scene with her family, which got the level of tenderness just right - her laugh at Laertes' awkward chastity speech, Polonius pausing uncomfortably as he extols the virtues of truth. And I loved Hamlet discovering a mike hidden inside her book, and dictating to it. The closet scene featured Gertrude able to see the ghost, but lying about it: what a wonderful choice!

In fact, there's only one bad thing about this one, and that's a pretty crass attempt to sell T-shirts half way through. But let's not think about that.

Instead, let's focus on the fact that I may just have seen a perfect Hamlet. So many of my quibbles were addressed, and the tedium of the second half almost totally evaporated. Any criticism I could have left should be aimed at the play itself. Which I've fallen in love with, all over again, with a funny feeling that Mr Kinnear has just fundamentally altered the way I see it...

I've just got a great text from Friend 2 regarding today's protests. She's been watching along on the telly, but could not have expressed the afternoon better if she'd actually been there:

Good...[regarding the fact I would refuse to protest with that lot after dark] the atmosphere seemed a bit too...tense/expectant/charged on tv. Like they were all waiting for something. And there were too many police.
~24/11/2010 17:15

Because before the protest even started on the Strand, I could hear the three helicopters overhead, and saw riot vans crossing the city, and two policemen taking up post outside the uni.

I probably had better things to do that walk about in the cold with no gloves, with people I don't respect, put myself in possible mortal peril, and make no difference whatsoever - but then I get so pissed off at people who think that's a good enough excuse. I've probably got Blake to blame for that, and for the record unlike me, he is obviously a big fan of violent civil disobedience. He'd have thought Millbank was great, but would probably have been a little more efficient about trashing the place. (The Doctor doesn't need a political stance because he can bring down a government in six words or less.) And it's interesting, because I would argue Blake's stance is justified on the grounds that he has no other means of protesting. Freedom of speech, fair trial and rights to assembly - peaceful methods, in other words - are totally impossible for him, making his violence his only option. But then...isn't violence our only option? Working on the basis that the government were never going to reverse the cuts, no matter how many flower children designed witty banners and danced...

I'd been to the previous protest, which was a beautiful fun day ruined by mayhem I totally missed. I figured Protest #2 could go one of two ways - either the pacifists would come out in force to disassociate the student movement from the Millbank mess. Or, as appears to have happened, the troublemakers would redouble their prescence, and the disillusioned pacifists wouldn't bother to show up at all. I could tell at once this was not a protest I wanted to walk with - but I did have my camera with me (been trying to shoot an avant-garde movie, and my ideas require sunlight and Central London), so had a bash at documentary.

One of the things you'll note from the film is my interest not in the protestors, but the police prescence. I couldn't quite take in how darn many there were - somebody was overcompensating. That too bloodied the atmosphere. Being trailed by six riot vans is never going to make a crowd happy. I moved between being just at the back, in front of the police line, and just behind them. Met a guy dressed as the Joker, I guess - he had a bowler hat, clown face paint and a funny manner of speaking and walking, although he had not adopted the purples and greens

"Your card is the - Jack of hearts!" he guessed raspily on noticing my hat. I'm not kidding - to get ahead in the world, wear a splendid hat. Interesting, artistic, millinary-appreciating people feel the need to compliment it, and you can then have conversations with them. He was accompanied by a really pretty chap (I think; retrospectively, could have been female; really pretty in either case) dressed as Edward Scissorhands.

The protest came to a halt in Parliament Square, simply because those at the front stopped moving. I imagine, corralled by police vans at the other end. The atmosphere was not nice. Two separate groups had brought loudspeakers rigged up to dance music, but not the positive euphoric sort. The exciting, ugly sort which is fun if you're pretending to be a post-apocalyptic biopunk at a rave, but is a bit too appropriate to hordes of angry youth. A group had already climbed on top of a bus shelter, with one of the speakers, and a mini-rave had begun.

On the opposite side of the square, a line of people were standing on the sandbags, piled against a temporary railing that kept the protest off an open drain - I joined them for a better perspective, and made a classic mistake. A few minutes later, a sort of stampede toppeled the distant end of the railing, and that dragged the whole thing down section by section. My first instinct was to jump off the sandbags and get away from the trouble - retrospectively, my first instinct should have been to stay there and keep recording. Not a mistake I will make again!

In the middle, a police van was overrun by enemy forces - slogans had been sharpied all over it, an Anarchy banner erected on top, by three revellers who had scaled the sides. One wearing the iconic V mask. I love how the iconography of V for Vendetta has been adopted by real life - it's the kind of reality bending I really enjoy. The despair was new - I've never felt that at a protest before. I think a sense of severe disillusionment was what made it all so nasty, as if everyone were to say "Who cares if a few buildings get trashed? Or if I get jailed? You're not going to listen anyway - I'd rather take out my hate than petition for my hope". After the governmental double-cross, and the miserable end to the last demo, the only people who would bother protesting a third time would have to be the last stand mad-spitfires.

I didn't feel comfortable at all, so stayed to the outskirts where there was still quite a lot of space. I kept shooting until my battery ran out, then went to leave. No such luck - the three police lines were preventing exit on all sides. The chaps I spoke to were all very pleasant about it, suprisingly present considering they were paid today to stand and wait to be beaten up. I would have expected them to be more tense. The man I spoke to on each side helpfully redirected me to the next side, where maybe people were being allowed to leave. In fact, no one on any side could get out unless they had a pass proving - I couldn't work out what, but some businessmen and photographers managed. I found a quiet corner and grumpily ate my pasta - I was quite cold by this point, bereft of the fun of filming, and getting increasingly late for a meeting with people I wanted to impress. Rather stressed about the crowds too - I hung around the police line and watched a lot of people turned away, even though they were still letting people in through a one-person gap at the back.

It increasingly felt like a tragedy in waiting, as different smokes rose from the very front, and someone let off a firework. Moderate people of various sorts had apparently made the same decision as me - this was not a protest they wanted to be at any more, and they wanted to be out before trouble, but were being prevented from. This included many of the reasonably dressed older women, spooked teenage girls and several bands of young kids. This bothered me a lot, because if trouble was on the cards, then surely diffusing the crowds in a controlled manner before it started would have cut down on chaos.

I'll be interested to hear how the situation was resolved in Parliament Square, because it seemed the easiest way of causing a riot/stampede that could have been designed. I attempted exit by all three sides multiple times, and while doing so a huge surge of people swarmed into the quiet space. At the time, I thought "well this is it then!" - I'd known there was no exit for about 15 minutes at this point, well long enough for it to filter through the crowd. I made a break for one of the shops lining the route (poor proprietors! Poor holidaymakers trapped in the cafes!) and got chatting with an older woman from just inside, as we watched people continue to move outside. Nothing kicked off, it was just spontaneous movement. I tried the three sides again, and finally decided to try and break out in the corner where people were entering. There were apparently people trying to exit, and I could see some succeeding.

No. 2, my dad, has an oft-repeated anecdote about getting a great view of a Genesis concert by following a really fat chap all the way to the front - well, I found a pair of overweight older women. They were let through just ahead of me, and then the gap closed leaving me face to face with a brick of a cop. After a moment, he asked "Tourist?". I brandished mny camera, nodded innocently, and tried to look Welsh. It worked, so thank goodness for blonde hair and general panic, because if he'd stopped to think about it, he'd have noticed I was dressed like the studentiest student who had ever studied.

Tadah! Freedom! At which point I allowed myself to be really damned unhappy about how the morning had turned out. Adrenaline does wonders in the moment, but then life crashes. In the ghostly empty street behind the protest, I met a group of school kids who had broken out of their school - literally, headmistress tried to keep them in, they smashed down the gates, to get to the protest. They all praised my hat (see?) and warned me about the corral, and seemed to be warning other latecomers.

I struggled back to my meeting, rather late, and was afterwards so tired that I found an abandoned room in the Strand and napped on a sofa for two hours before I felt able to walk to the Tube. Good day. Depressing and desperate, but no experience is intrinsically worthless, especially one you walk away from, and I'm now going to edit everything together for you folks at home. Catch you later!

I look forward to Halloween all year, but never ever do a costume in time. This year, the pressure is on: I am attending the Antichrist Halloween party, and there are some fabulously dressed people there, so I really have to compete!

Costume has more than a small element of shamanism to it - the idea that, by wearing the pelt of a bear you become a bear. You don't get hundreds of chaps old enough to know better dressing up as Colin Baker to show off their tailoring skillz. So I've some ideas - since learning pincurls, I considered doing Undead/Robotic Jane Austen. I've a wedding dress; or a 60s dress. But really, I'd like to take advantage of the liberal atmosphere to dress how I feel. I presume that's why the clothing gets so wacky at fetish clubs - the idea is you dress how you imagine yourself, and then become them. Queen of the vampires? Fine. Pin up? Definitely. Post-apocalyptic warrior? Why not.

Previously, I dressed up as Leda - which felt like safety in a way - and Deadeye Monaghan, Dandy of the High Seas - my Skypirate alter-ego. I put the Deadeye costume together in about ten minutes, complete with a broken spoon for an eyepatch, and it was excellent - and I felt excellent. The only way to top that feeling? TBCINM. As there were some elements of Blake-the-spaceship-captain in my Deadeye-the-skycaptain costume anyway. I have wanted to do this costume so very very much. I could do Jenna or Soolin. But - meh. And I've a sneaking suspicion it will look terrible, so what better place to testrun it than an environment where people will be wearing duct-tape?

I originally planned to make the huge iconic sleeves, but as that was made of green leather, I decided to tone it down the brown version - as it was still huge and swooshy, but in a more manageable fabric. Plus, this costume was featured in some of my very favourite scenes, so it made sense. About this time, got paranoid about sizes and shapes, so did some sketches. Which confirmed and crystalised what I had already, on some level, worked out. These costumes had been designed to flatter a rectangular person, and a rather stocky one at that. They would just look like sacks on me: back to the drawing board.

Shook the urge to wear something in poor taste. My third or fourth favourite costume is known as "the Robin Hood", and it could charitably be called a tunic, and less so, a mini-dress-over-leggins. Definitely achieveable, quite easy, and girl shaped.

So at 11 today, I dashed off in hunt of a simple green tunic to build the costume on top of. Bumped into the shooting for X-Men First Class, but they wouldn't let me have a look at filming. Still, I can inform you there is a scene on a balcony with a greenscreen background, featuring a lot of world war 2 soldiers. Walked up to the nearest Oxfam, on Drury Lane, which I had discovered when the washing machine broke and I was badly out of clothes. Consider buying a coat of the appropriate colour for conversion, but decided my sewing wasn't that good. I hate modern brand charity shops. Fair enough, they want to make money for their causes - but if I'm shopping at a charity, I don't want to spend more than a fiver on anything. Hence today, I wanted a cheap dress for a costume but kept encountering things in the £8-£20 range. Across the road to a vintage store - goddamn those places are even more depressing - all overpriced, but all uniform in what they sell. Did have some nice Fifth Doctor pullovers, though. I gave up on getting one of those about a year ago, as it's so totally unflattering. It didn't do Peter Davison any favours either: it coalesces with my blonde hair and sweet expression to make me look like a total wimp. Discover a third charity shop, which was properly cheap - but nothing suitable.

But I got my second recommendation of the day for Goodge Street, so off I toddled and took the Tube. Got lost in Tottenham Court a bit. But en route, I discovered Jackson's Toy Shop and Museum - which was an excellent emporium of stuff you'd never know how to find if you needed, like bouncy balls and Victorian scraps. And a massive Paperchase, which I shall definitely return to. Goodge Street had three rather upmarket charity shops and a vintage store. In Oxfam no. 2, I found a lime green silk dress which had the perfect shape to it - but was so obviously the incorrect colour that I couldn't justify it. Still, found some rather cool slides (overpriced!) of the planets and moon landings.

Was getting pretty peckish at this point, so I bussed down Oxford Street - resorting to mainstream stores. After all, charity shops had proved equally expensive. The problem with mainstream? If something isn't in, it isn't in - and I couldn't find any shop which would even attest to the existence of the colour I had in mind! Popped gloomily into John Lewis, as the only haberdashery I know of in London. Looked at patterns for a bit, but that was obviously beyond my talents - or at least, under the present circumstances. Considered Primark. Had a pizza slice.

The only other charity nub I knew of in London was West Hampsted, with it's road of ten in a row, so I took a train up to my old grounds and had a mosey around there. I shot through all ten in as many minutes - it was 4 by this point, and I was aware that closing was going to happen soon. No luck. I bewailed my sad situation to the final checkout assistant, who recommended I go to Kilburn. Bus! Kilburn! Nasty area, and it took me some time to find the charity shops she had meant. Traid - charity shop number 17 - was unhelpful. By this point, I abandoned the idea of adding black panels to a green dress - I would add green panels to the ubiquitous (?) black dress, and to this end went into the cheap-and-nasty shop next door. Perfect! Found it in minutes - my size, the fit I wanted, everything. I think it's a bit short, but who's counting. And next door, a cheap Cancer Research provided a lovely, lovely skirt in the perfect shade of green.

Then I staggered home and slept. Five hours, five hours of shopping - but at least I didn't need to resort to my last case ideas: dressmaking from scratch, or visiting fetish shops (from which Blake's 7 notoriously bought their original costumes). Still, there is quite a to-do list, which I type for my own benefit in order of priority:

Tuesday: vital stuff

• Record mp3 of Greek verbs, so they can be played ad nauseam.
• Go to Tescos - buy a tin of water chestnuts and a cereal multi-pack. Eat cereal, fold out boxes and work out size. Plus milk.
• Make pattern of the front and back panels on dress
• Decide how closely to adhere to the triangular design of the original
  
• Make pattern for shoulder pads. Work out how much felt and ribbon you need, not forgetting the trim.
  
• Go to Greenford Hobbycraft for:

Black felt + ribbons + stiffening something or other (shoulder pads)
black ribbons (costume trim)
brown and gold paint/tape/something (teleport bracelet)
embellishments (teleport bracelet)
serious duty glue (ray gun)
white felt x 2 (power packs)
felt for other projects
polystyrine ball? for the base of the ray gun.

• Get home without getting into trouble. Get over supersticious dislike of Greenford based on previous visit. Coo while passing Perivale.
  
• Cut skirt into desired shape, carefully because it's an inconvenient material.
• Attach skirt to dress. Somehow.
• Prance around happily in front of a mirror.
• Make and add shoulder pads (probably felt squares + ribbon, or maybe some of Bevenita's black tape?)
• Remember ribbon around the neckline Have stir fry for tea.
• Start work on whatever you can from tomorrow, today.
  
• start thinking NOW about Halloween next year...

Wednesday

• Cereal for breakfast - if necessary, cereal with water chestnuts. Style 1920s hair.
  
• Early morning Greek. Lose the will to live.
  
• Go to Soho for sleeve material if there was nothing suitable in Greenford, but don't waste too much time - it's too vital a part of the costume to screw up.
• Return to campus and style hair of companions for Bloomsbury High Tea
• Go to Bloomsbury Tea (3-5). Relax.
  
• Assemble ray gun
• build teleport bracelet
  
• Look lovingly at the original undershirt, and reflect that it is probably too warm to wear to a club even if you did have time to make it. Which you don't.
  
• Badger friends about lending you something with a huge collar anyway, to compensate...
• Consider, ruefully, that there is no way to incorporate fake blood into the costume. Consider doing it anyway.
  
• Email mum about making said undershirt for the future...
  

Thursday

• Meet Friend 2. Go to Manics concert. Do some work.
• SWAPBOT.
• Library books. Make decision about Poggius script.
  
• Have shower and curl hair overnight

Friday

• pincurl hair
  
• use any skirt scraps as ribbons in hair
  
• combine with eyepatch and add a Federation logo with facepaint, just because I look good in an eyepatch and facepaint.
• Die
• Enjoy party.
  

Sure - 2010 isn't over yet. But I have so, so many awesome corkers already that I thought I'd start this term afresh.

So come one! Come all! Marvel at tautologous dialectic debate! Gasp at speculative heuristic modalities! Speculate as to exactly what academics are compensating for! You've seen it on your television screens, you've heard it on the news - now live for one night only, the one, the only:


Junior Division: prizes for individual words.

Academic Puns
Calypso notes that the use of puns are "pretty much the only fun academics have". This year's most popular word:

"DissemiNation" - about diaspora from Nation and Narration

"Nation, Space and Politics" from last year's champion, Terry Nation. See what they did there? The sub headings are even better: "Nation-wide influence"; "The blurring of Nations"; "the birth and death of a Nation"; "a Nation divided: geographical and social space"; "Microcosmic, allegorical Nations"; "Binary Nations"; "dystopian Nations" e.t.c...

On this model, here are some suggested titles for future Doctor Who essays:

"Little Miss Moffat: Fairytale Stylings and the Dream Landscape In Season Five"
"What's On and Holmes: Reimagining the Gaslight Detection Narrative Under Hinchcliffe*"
"Masterplan or CartMelodrama? Developing the character of Ace."

*I know jokes aren't funny once explained, but this is funnier if you know the Hinchcliffe era was script-edited by Robert Holmes, packed with gothic horror and and once featured the Doctor in a deerstalker...

Made Up Words
"The Gothicity of Slime" - I presume gothicity means "gothic-ness"

A repeated word in a poem was described as an example of "geminisation"

"Hauntology" - investigation suggests this (broadly) means "nostalgia"; Calypso simplifies things by explaining "it's the study of queer spectrality"

"Fraudomy" - I suspect the pronounciation ought to be something like "fraud-oh-mee" - but who knows? Or cares? Let's call it "Frodd-om-mee"! Logic suggests it means: "I thought I was a sodomist - but it's OK, just kidding!". But having googled the book in question, the author himself can explain:

I propose to read sodomy in a way that has less to do with revealing a particular "truth" (or "truths") than with thinking about sodomy as a mode of knowledge, a way of reading the articulations between these various forms.

So now you know.

"Phallologists" - people who examine queer philology. Ignoring it's Just-A-Minute ring, I don't even like this as a concept. Why would queer philology have to be all about phalluses anyway? Can't we have Rainbologists or something?

Junior Division 2: Phrases

The "Water is Wet Except When It Isn't" award: Saturday Morning Censorship

"Censorship both prohibits and produces meanings"

The Stephen Fry Goblet For Using Twelve Words When Two Would Do - forgot to cite the source for this, but I think it's "Terry Nation" again.

"Very frequently, linear narratives and parallel montage are combined, creating dramatic structures emphasising repeating patterns of character separation and reunification"

Translation:

"The Doctor and companions are split up. All the time."

The Doctor Seuss prize for Prose: Just Gaming (JF Lyotard); pg 41

"As narrator she is narrated as well. And in a way she is already told, and what she herself is telling will not undo that somewhere else she is told."

Ah, but who is telling you, Baloo? Have you told about them too? Ah! Let's talk as we walk to the zoo!

Runners up:
"Patriotic, atavistic temporality of Traditionalism" -Nation and Narration (pg 300)

Senior Division One: Titles

Lovecraft Memorial Goblet: Syllables Will Eat Your Soul
"The Darwinian law of competitive Devolution versus the Kropotkinian law of symbiotic Evolution & its Metaphysical Manichaeian Division"

In some alternate world, surely this is Saturday Morning TV show - "Oh no! Kropotkinian is destroying the city with his tenticles! When trouble strikes: call up the Manichaeian Division!"

Most Arresting Title:
"The Masturbating Venuses of Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Ovid, Martial, and Poliziano"

Some academics will do anything for a grant. This chap seems to have hit jackpot by getting all serious about the world's favourite topic. Incidentally, the paintings under discussion are this one and this one

Runner up; and winner of the Words Prize for Using Words

"Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama"

...so, Queer Virginity, eh? What does that mean, when not being eyecatching?

The "Surely This Is A Parody" Fiji Mermaid Statue

"Stripping the Public Bare: Theorising the Politics of In/Equality from Nudist Encounters"

This has it all, ladies and gents: it scores four shots on the academic title bingo. The focus of the paper is on, broadly speaking, Nudist Equality as compared to race, gender and sexuality struggles. You'd think this was fairly easy to answer, as three of these four activities is a quirk of birth, and the other a one-way track to hypothermia. But nothing can ever be that simple, as the abstract explains:

"Equality here gets read away from its calculative, distributive modality, to focus instead on textured, touch-based equality fantasies."

So now you know.

Runners up:

'Commodities and Culture in the Colonial World 1851-1914' is hosting a roundtable discussion on 'Global Theory; 'Theory' in/of Motion'

Senior Division 2: Special Interest Awards

The Cold Fish Trophy for Academic Missing The Point

"...the refusal to accept norms of behaviour or social constraints is an advantage that allows Blake to pursue his visions of a better world, but it also makes him somewhat ruthless and uncompromising."

The key here is "somewhat". Blake's transformation from Generic Hero Guy to very flawed and surprisingly nasty is a brilliant and uncomfortable turn of events. Dismissing it as "somewhat", to my mind, suggests they just weren't watching properly.

For those operating at the other end of the spectrum, we have the Taking It Too Seriously Memorial Garland: http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Essays/neil-A-B.html

"That the Blake/Avon relationship is not only the most developed and most significant relationship in the series, but also one between *two men*, means there is no attractive female role offered to the female viewer. She must therefore insinuate one into the inter-male relationship by ascribing traditionally female role qualities to one of the male characters..."

"I propose, therefore, that Avon is asked to fill, simultaneously, the roles of Man, Woman and Child, and things naturally get confusing. Hence Avon's relationship with Blake, operating in all three spheres, is likewise confused."

Ripperologist of the Year
This new award is dedicated to "experts" in a specific field. This was an especially competitive field, with casual, amateur lunatics fighting to distinguish themselves from professional fruitcakes. Some of my faves:

"Connecting the Dots: Were the Ripper Crime Scenes Chosen to Form a Pattern?"

What do you think?

Most Respectful Ripper Memorial:
http://www.amazon.com/Young-Witches-Vol-Babylon-Graphic/dp/1560972416/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

Oh yes. Well, there would be porn. Words...defy me...

The Award for Academic Thoroughness: Jack the Ripper: A New Theory (William Stewart)

"Could a Jack the Ripper today evade the police as easily as 1888? If Jack the Ripper was the sort of person I imagine there can only be one answer: yes"

This statement's vagueness is rivalled only by it's pointlessness. "If Oliver Cromwell's pancake making skills were as formidable as I suspect, he would undoubtedly singlehandedly bring peace to the Congo."

Senior Division 3: Personalities

Department of the Year
"Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence" Sussex

You just know they all lounge around wearing nothing but Venetian masks and expensive slippers, and write all their essays using the backs of recently-debauched maidens in place of desks, while pages dressed as Cupid bring them strange fruit, and wine in curious jade goblets fashioned in crude forms. I'd love to listen in on their dissertation proposal day...

Runner up:

Could the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies get any more vague?

Study of the Year
It is vital to correctly reference all academic works. Luckily, there's the "Study on Empathy for pain in Couples":

This project investigates empathy for pain (that is, how an ‘observer’ understands the pain of a ‘sufferer') in people who are in a romantic relationship. Please note that this study DOES NOT involve fMRI.

Oh really?

Male participants will experience mild to moderate heat pain during the study (e.g., like that of touching a hot cup or plate) in regular brief intervals, and will be asked to rate their pain experience. Their partners will be either in the same room or in a separate room, and will be asked to rate their level of empathy for their partner. Both participants will also have to complete some questionnaires on personality traits where they are asked to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements concerning: anxiety (e.g., "I feel calm/tense"); mood (e.g., "I feel content/unhappy"); romantic attachment (e.g., "I feel comfortable/uncomfortable depending on romantic partners"); and pain attitudes and beliefs (e.g. "I find it easy/difficult to ignore the pain"). The device used to create pain (i.e., a small stimulator attached to the arm), is safe and it will not cause damage to the skin. Also, participants will get to sample the experience of pain at the beginning of the study and the amount of pain will not exceed the levels agreed by them at anytime during the study.

Gee, thank goodness! I'd been worrying how I'd substantiate the outlandish claim that "my other half gets upset when I am in pain"...on a more pedantic note, I'm interested by their use of "couples" and then the assumption that one member of this couple will be male...but I suppose that would necessitate a special study to establish that queer couples empathise just like regular sized ones do. Darned academic rigour!

Scholar of the year
A translation of Petrarch's sonnets in Senate House Library bears the following frontispiece quote:

"In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first that cast away her shroud and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his example, may justly be applauded as the first harbinger of day" - GIBBON

Beneath, a later reader has added in pencil:

"Likewise Ms. Wollaston's translation might justly be derided as the harbinger of new Barbarianism"

As much as the destruction of books chills me, I am always cheered by the appearance of satiric pencil notes. In my perfect world, readers would be encouraged to write margin-commentaries in library books for the next reader to discover. The world of academia would be much improved. In other places, he points out a "non sequitur", adds a Latin quote "parva sed apta mihi", and underlines paragraphs which - at first - I thought were those most relevant to his reading, but am now convinced highlight its worst excesses. He has also counted and made note that Ms W's whinging introduction runs to 68 words:

"It is not without a feeling of anxiety and diffidence, that I submit my poetical translation of "One hundred sonnets of Francesco Petrarca" to the world of critics, when I reflect how vast is the ordeal to which I have voluntarily exposed myself, in having undertaken a task none have thought fit to accomplish before me, whilst my sovereigns in intellect have not hesitated to acknowledge its difficulty"

Because there's nothing like modesty. And having flicked through the book, her introduction is indeed pants. My favourite passage is this piece of incisive and rigorous scholarship:

"The cord of life which had bound Petraca in union with so many friends had so unexpectedly snapped, that he looked fearfully round upon those still in existence, and fancied he heard the fatal shears contracting still more his narrowing circle, whilst one torturing vision clung night and day to his mind - it was a presentiment of his Laura's death. It was not long before his fatal foreboding was verified; intelligence reached him at Verona that she too had sunk a victim to the plague. We will not pause to describe the poet's feelings on this severest of bereavements...

But she does:

"...Who that has enshrined every hope and happiness in the existence of one loved object will not feel how complete must have been the wreck of both to Petraca in this his loss. Death had robbed him of his sweetest and tenderest tie, his only golden link to life - now his heart was widowed, his hope elsewhere. But did religion permit his noble mind to remain a darkening void, busy only with distorted images of despondency and gloom? No! once more he roused himself and found consolation in projecting schemes for his suffering country."

e.t.c. e.t.c., and this is before you even get to the poetry.

A runner up in this category commented on the introduction of Barsby's Ovid. He describes a poet whose women are no more than beautiful, silent stautes as having fantastic insight into the female mind. Our later pencil-bearing reader added:

"Really, Mr Barsby?"

Book of the Year:

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis

Is to academia what aura reading is to a CAT scan, and is apparently the results of a professor's bet that anything can get published: "what about theorising that each book of the Narnia series was deliberatly based on the Copernican model of the universe?"

I recommend visiting his website - the Independant calls his theory "sensible", the Heythrop Journal "extremely convincing", and the Slime O' The Grot Express "Oh God Just Return The Children, I'll Say Anything." It also slyly quotes endorsement from the author of "The Da Vinci Hoax". Convinced? It's certainly true that, however marvellous, the Narnia books are a slightly mad inconsistent mess. So have a go now, and see which planets you would relate to which. I now quote Wikipedia, quoting Ward:

"In The Lion [the Pevensie children] become monarchs under sovereign Jove; in The Dawn Treader they drink light under searching Sol; in Prince Caspian they harden under strong Mars; in The Silver Chair they learn obedience under subordinate Luna; in The Horse and His Boy they come to love poetry under eloquent Mercury; in The Magician's Nephew they gain life-giving fruit under fertile Venus; and in The Last Battle they suffer and die under chilling Saturn."

How did you do? For my next trick, I shall relate each of the Care Bears to a Tarot trump...

Linguist of the Year: our very own Calypso!

We stumbled across this arcane passage in a book which we were increasingly sure was the lost tome Diacritics, by that elusive alchaemist Judith Butler. For fourty days and fourty nights, we poured over the occult text, trying to make the smallest sense of the strange characters and inhumanly contorted syntax.

“The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony, in which power relations are subject to repetition convergence, and rearticulation, brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

It was in no small part my rigourous study of the Ancients contributed to our success, and together we mapped out the structure of a vital fragment by identifying subject, object, verb, and linking antecedants with subclauses e.t.c:

“The move from a structuralist account
(in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways)

to a view of hegemony
(in which power relations are subject to repetition convergence, and rearticulation)

brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure //

and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory
(that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects)

to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony
as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.”

Yet Calypso provided the final, elegant translation: "Structure is being rethought because power isn't as simple as we thought"

I dropped into the Mediatheque for a laugh last night, and recieved some food for thought. The Mediatheque is a sort of youtube for film buffs, on site at the BFI. You pop into a booth, and a odd selection of cinema is your oyster - from TV and shorts, to PSAs and full movies. Frustratingly, it is almost always the final episode of any series, but whatever.

There was a perhaps unsurprising lack of comedy, with the most interesting item a series of short, 1900s movies about hilarious Jews. Which you would think would really interest me, considering the wealth of offensive material hidden at the back of my wardrobe, but I think something about filmed oppression freaks me out. I found the Black and White Minstrel show deeply disturbing, and had to turn it off, but can't apply the same visceral horror to the various homophobic/racist pamphlets I collect.

So I watched a bit of Carry on Camping, and then the underwhelming Five Go Mad in Dorset (merely stating the facts of what you are parodying in a context when you're meant to laugh isn't any funnier than just presenting what you are parodying). And then found Are You Being Served?, which was just the type of thing I'd hoped for.

Very daft, quite marvellous, I've a crush on Mr Lucas that's some four decades out of date. But I was interesting to read the notes. The BFI uploads new content in "collections" - this was part of their Queer Lives collection, and had been chosen because the Mr Humphries character was controvertial and had been protested.

Is it offensive? I don't find it so, but were I a gay man I may feel differently. Perhaps in the context when that's the only gay representation on screen, but then I feel it is in a way better than nothing. Fun is poked at Mr Humphries effeminacy, but it's never at the expense of him also being a well loved character. The humour is not cruel, and a similar sort of humour is used of Miss Brahm's sexuality. It's a comedy, after all.

Furthermore, I don't think the stereotype is unreasonable: look at Quentin Crisp. Effeminate, bitchy chaps do exist - but then the rules about stereotypes are always a bit tricky to people outside said group. Wikipedia tells me his orientation was never specified, and that gags about Mrs Slocumbe's pussy (cat) also recieved complaints.

Much controversy at the time came from the portrayal of Mr Humphries, the screamingly camp menswear assistant. Certainly at a time when there were so few representations of gay men it was a stereotypical one. However, now it seems much less offensive, partly because Mr Humphries emerges as the only character with any dignity and self-respect. Compared to the self-loathing of his downtrodden colleagues, his cry of 'I'm free' seems apt.
- BFI screenonline.

Was this controversy from homos or homophobos? Similarly, there was pressure from the BBC to drop the character - but what sort of pressure was this? Sympathetic allies, or Green Ink From Slime On The Grot? And wikipedia adds:

Inman reported that four or five members of the group Campaign for Homosexual Equality picketed one of his shows in protest as they believed his persona did not help their cause. Inman said that "they thought I was over exaggerating the gay character. But I don't think I do. In fact there are people far more camp than Mr. Humphries walking around this country. Anyway, I know for a fact that an enormous number of viewers like Mr. Humphries and don't really care whether he's camp or not. So far from doing harm to the homosexual image, I feel I might be doing some good."

I'm with him on this - but people have the right to be offended at what they wish. As the US proved, by viewing him as a gay icon.


If you'd rather get angry at female rights than gay rights today, toddle over to this fabulous Female Characters Flowchart.

Dear all. Today I saw a real child birth. And an autopsy. A whole bunch of autopsy.

They call that "in media res". The Greeks invented it. I do Classics.

The Avant Garde cinema course is proving to be terribly, terribly pretentious, but unlike Noir, it's supposed to be. I had to fight with claws to get onto it, and even though I feel a little worried about my essays - what am I to write? - every time a film starts, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer rightness of the experience. I am meant to be here, because I love the experience of watching those films. Which is quite the opposite to the palpable sense of "what am I doing here?" caused by noir.

The makeup of the class is also interesting. Over my three years at uni, I've felt a bit isolated in both my courses by other people. I suppose that's no one's fault, as I'm a ghost in both my departments. I feel a sense of hostility off them, and I in turn feel hostile, normally directed towards specific people who just piss me off merely by existing. Friend 2 is right: I have rage issues. In any case, there is a noticeable subset of the film department who are proto-academics. They always engage with the most roundabout and bonkers parts of the texts. They evidently adore Ginsburg, Niezche and Kerouac. hey have moleskines, or recycled notepads with a checker pattern instead of lines. Many have leather satchels. Several are Marxists. They wear unflattering huge glasses, and grandad-sweaters - and that's just the guys.

Something else links them - they're all in this class, and I suppose it's because if you are a pretentious hipster, the course with the highest dropoff rate in the university which requires you to watch frequently offensive/dull/inconsequential/guano shorts is the place you gotta be. To prove your hardcoreness if nothing else. The type of people who, when your lecturer offers a one-off screening of a 7-hour long avant garde movie, actually take the offer up. I know I did, and all this is making me worry that I fit their company too well. I mean, who am I to criticise the way anybody dresses at all? This morning, I was inspired by William Holden in The Wild Bunch, which isn't even a film I liked: quite cowboyish, but very red.

They call that context.

Anyway, I started getting worried today when the lecturer suggested the high number of absences were caused by those who had read the articles about the movies in advance. I had not done the reading. I'd like to nobly say it was because I hated to spoil the surprise, and this is indeed true. I'm also lazy. We were informed that the first time she showed it, half her class walked out and one hurled, and that we were not allowed to leave. Although I'm sure we could have, if necessary. Not that it was necesssary: we're the American Underground class! The Hardcore Pretentious Hipster club! Why would we?

Of course, they'd all done the reading, so I missed out on what everyone was talking around until just before the DVD began. It came with a handy warning that the following movie contained "actual autopsy footage" - which in itself was interesting. As if the fact it was real changed something. I mean, it obviously does - but if you're going to be chilly about it, it's all just image, and you could have replicated that all with effects. Would it have been as uncomfortable to watch had it been identical, but with the comfort it wasn't "actual"? At the end of the day, all we saw in the cinema was a mechanical reproduction - only the word "actual" made the difference to us. You could have convinced us it was fake.

Not that I thought that at the time - that occured to me some four minutes through. And it wasn't even "Jesu, pass me a bucket", because there are some contexts where I know I have nerves of steel, and this was one of them. It was something like this:

I have some very strong, very ancient views about art, and I've never had a chance to properly test them. Let me explain:

Oscar Wilde fried my brain very early, with the concept that "art is useless". From that, and associated ideas of the aesthetic movement, I formed my own opinions which I today discovered are actually a form of modernist thought. Art is something not put to use (hence my hatred of realism/"message" movies), so anything can be art when divorced from its context. Everyone complains about the screaming groans on the Bakerloo line. It sounds like music to me, because I decide "this is music", and then suddenly there are cadences and rhythm. And it's here that I find my love of terrible, atonal music. And in my mind, this is associated with children. You know, how a three year old will get hold of a fork, and it's suddenly the best thing ever. I suppose if you've never seen a fork before (or a hat, or a ball...), it must be pretty damn exciting, and that's the joy kids find in life: they can see this beauty everywhere. And so can we all, if you start appreciating a fork as art divorced from context - it's lines, shapes, colours, forms, light bouncing off metal and shining. There's nothing intrinsically separating the sparkle of a fork from the sparkle of a diamond. To get back to the Bakerloo line, the adult commuter hears the noise and itches for the WD-40, dismissing it as painful and annoying. That's only because they haven't abstracted it out of it's context.

That's my position on art, in a nutshell, and I hope you followed it near enough. When I go around spouting things like "everything is beautiful", or "everyone is beautiful", it's not because I'm a big damn hippy. It's because 9 times out of 10, every time I see something my mind asks "is it art?", and then rearranges my thought until it is so.

I'd take this position to a pretty extreme extent. For my Sixth Form art project, I argued something similar and wanted to use images of 9/11 to prove my point. Not the black and white arty photos, just any photos. Clouds and fire are beautiful - its just the idea of what those photos are which is horrific. Understandibly, teacher didn't think that was such a good idea, and in the end, I did the same concept but on decaying buildings. A noncontrovertial version.

But you can't take an idea like that without pushing it far. And that brings me to the dog story, in which an artist chains up a dog in an art gallery and leaves it to starve to death "as art", the internet protests, and invites Unmutual to join a group expressing how much she protests. When viewing the inbox request, my gut reaction, my microresponse before anything logical kicked in, was "but...wow!" And then a sense of total horror, aimed mostly at myself and not the original artist. Felt dirty for days after that, but still did not join the Facebook group. This isn't a story I'm particularly proud of - it shows me in a very ugly light indeed. I only mention it to point out these beliefs are apparently innate. Or in any case, more innate than my hatred of animal cruelty.

So the question was: I'm about to watch some autopsies. How extreme can this position go? And if you're at all sensitive about hearing about said film, or me using my typical blase exaggerated cynical tone to discuss it, now is the time to click the little X in the top right and come back next time I write about kittens.

Answer: I need to watch some mondo. Because it turns out that yes, in the hands of a fantastic director, you can abstract the human body just like you can anything else. I feel strongly that, in his use of colour and close ups, he was trying to express just my position. So many of the shots you could not tell what they were at first - they were indeed just colour and shape. You couldn't even necessarily distinguish the live flesh of surgeon from the dead flesh. Turns out that yes, even here there is beauty. There was absolutely no context - no names, virtually no faces, certainly no politics or underlying ideas.

I also thought a lot about how else you could have shot the film - in order, from further away, with sound (what music could you possibly use?) or in detail like Channel Five's Celebrity Hysterectomy: Our Hands In Your Guts. I feel it was very carefully constructed so as not to be gross. As far as that's possible when you're watching a head reduced to a Gallifreyan skullcap made of actual skull. I noted that the first fewindividuals were old men. I would probably have naturally gone man, woman - the fact he didn't stood out. I think I would have felt differently about a woman - whether because I is one, or because female nudity is a bigger taboo (I've a feeling it would have suggested sexual violence automatically), or a white knight streak. And children go without saying. It also started with a body examination, which took me by surprise - I figured autopsies were gross-out scalpel affairs.

Turns out this was an act of genius, which eased you into the movie. Ultimately, there was all of the above, but I feel it got successively worse (according to my notes, men -> knives - > a child, but shot tastefully, from quite a distance - > women - > really unpleasant stuff you do not want to see, combined with faster editing). But even as it got worse, I felt you were better prepared to handle it - not desensitised, just calm about the process. I mean, is it really any worse to cut up a woman than a man, or a child? Not really. Does it really matter what it is they do? Again - not really.

Although there were some shots at the end which I do feel were too much - but was that the cumulation? And indeed, I felt the whole film was too long - it bothered me a bit to begin with, then not at all, but towards the end bothered me rather more. I felt more viscerally grossed out by the serial killer lecture - which I almost had to walk out of - even though there wasn't any remotely objectionable content. Perhaps because that asked you to consider death from an intellectual standpoint, and I feel here it was an impersonal artistic exercise. Interestingly, I'm having more of a reaction to it now as I write as I did while watching - my throat dries out, and then feels like it's coated with babybel - which suggests this is true.

I also felt vegitarianism changed things. Several people mentioned the aspect of meat during the seminar, which I had also considered while watching. Part of becoming a veggie is breaking down that wall between "animal meat" and "living animal". Once you break that wall, it's hard to replace, and it's not much further to connect "animal meat" to "living human" - I'd say it was impossible to turn your back on that. Very much in my mind as I viewed, and I was in part amused by everyone else's responses. Yes. Yes, exactly. Chew on that.

Was I affected? Was I not affected? I think my emotions tend come out in strange ways, not always attached to their causes (Is this repression, psychopathy, depression, or passive aggression? Or overanalysis?) I think a bit of both - I feel the film was too long, because there was a level at which I could watch it as dispassionate art but not for very long, certainly not the whole running time. And I did need fresh air and a chocolate milk afterwards. I'm feeling less well now, than I did a few hours previous. And I'm interested to see how it affects me in the next few days - whether the imagery fades, whether it matters more or less.

In any case, he's an inspiration - or rather, he does things I've already thought of doing, but proves they can be done. I'd rather beat rush hour than write about Window Water Baby Moving - the childbirth one - right now, but it achieves something I've dreamed of doing. Catching the emotions of an event on screen, without narrative or anything else. And I feel I've absorbed aspects of his style - i.e, lots of close ups force colour harmony.

Because I'm not a pretentious hipster at all.

Also. I just saw a brain scooped out of a skull.

So here I am, back from my first film noir seminar, and my tutors have just explained that they are "introducing the topic, but also framing it".

I am, in all honesty, a little upset. I appreciate that film can be studied on many, many levels. And the arto-philosophico -totally divorced from any sort of reality approach is an important one. If only in a purely academic context. But if you want to analyse real-world factors, it's important not to move too far away from a populist reading of cinema i.e. it's a product, designed to appeal to consumers. Perhaps noir is "about" class structure, and remapping race, but it's also one of cinema's most self indulgent genres. It's popular because it offers a heady dose of everyone's favourite things, including:

• sex - marvellous femme fatales, rugged grizzled wise guys
• violence - the above, shooting one another in a variety of inventive ways. And film noir offers a particularly brutal, nihilistic form of violence, frequently perpetrated by the heros.
• A combination of the above.
• wish fufilment - men are quick-talking and smooth, women are always terribly glamorous and a little in love with them
• morbid curiosity - anything crime or murder related fufils a desire for "true crime" stories, but they also tend to up the salacious women's mag interest by adding evil cripples, maniac mad women, nymphomaniacs, "bisexuals who kill!" (a genuine essay we get to read later in the term), psychopaths, drug addicts e.t.c.

Obviously, class and race play a part in this. Obviously, as a serious film academic we can't rely on how normal people react to mainstream movies - they're only the intended, paying audience. And then, at the same time, you've got the subtitle to this course -"Geographies of Desire" - which we've had described to us in the following way:

"geography, as a discourse or field is very wide and quite discursive"

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up. The idea of teaching is, not unsurprisingly, to convey ideas from a wiser individual to a less learned one. This course is being taken jointly by two younger members of the department, and I feel as if they've been chomped up and regurgitated, using lots of long words in place of content. That, or I'm just too stupid to understand - which isn't impossible, but also doesn't seem likely. Noir, we are told, represents the "failure of a capital society" but we need to "constitute other noirs", and discover "how place comes to engender domestic dialogues in film". He capped off this five minute barrage of nonsensical proto-Marxism by apologising: "it sounds a bit reductive and totalising". I'm a Latin student, and I understand "reductive" has something to do with "reduced" which also implies "cut down, simple, shortened. I'd hate to hear the full rendition. We also discussed a bit about what noir is as a genre. I quote:

A first inclusion then would be to contend that...[stopped paying attention,
distracted by the fact that none of those words mean anything]...its most stable
characteristic is its absent centeredness, it's over determiness whose ghostly
discources, instead of cancelling out...[put my pen down in disgust]

Dear Christ, is it too much to ask for a good gunfight?

The most frustrating thing about all this is I disagree with the tutors entirely, in what I think they're trying to say. And I'd love to get to grips with why one of us is wrong, if only they would speak plainly. Last year, I figured I had noir sussed: it's Anti Classical Hollywood Cinema:

• Hollywood heroes are good guys, whose core beliefs are reinforced by the movie.
• Noir heroes are flawed, and if they have core beliefs, they are inevitably destroyed
• Hollywood heroes overcome the odds
• Noir heroes are overcome by the odds
• Hollywood heroes are buoyed by optimism
• Noir heroes are resigned to their inevitable failure
• Hollywood heroes go on a journey and learn
• Noir heroes are doomed to repeat old bad habits and patterns
• Hollywood heroes never give up
• Noir heroes don't know what's good for them, and are habitually stupid
• Hollywood heroes get the girl
• ...do I even need to answer this?

But then, as Pluto pointed out, this also adequately describes South Park, so perhaps it is inaccurate. Perhaps there has to be a sort of "detection narrative" to make it truly noir. I'll never know if they don't start putting context in their lectures, instead of speaking around the topic in a never ending thesaurathon. And there have been some interesting ideas in the reading, particularly comparing noirs and westerns - during the McCarthey era, the downbeat conscience of noir moved away from contemporary movies to ones safely set in the past. I'm also endlessly reminded of Blake's 7, but I suppose anything would. Can we technically count it as noir? It certainly fufills most of my categories.

Film noir is my very favourite genre - I enjoy the pessimism, and how smashed up it leaves people; and I also enjoy the beatings up, and the fantastic hair, and it's bleak outlook on human nature.

And it's multifaceted modalities of heuristic discourse.

I've been trying to write this blog for - one week and two days - but the fact is, I can't really write about, or even refer to, the one big thing I'd like to write and refer about. And this, in turn, has spawned about fifteen half-finished bloglets - I can't seem to complete one.

Luckily, I found a fantastic nerdy quiz - match up the famous last words with the minor B7 characters who utter them before expiring. I could only identify 67% of them - I don't know whether to be proud or embarassed of how high that is. But together and out of context, provide some utterly fantastic sci-fi trash. It also, necessarily, comes with a very low level spoiler rating - but should only be a problem for people with photographic memories, as it's normally safe to assume minor characters never make it...

This fufils my B7 quota, hopefully destroys my writers block, and shall prove entertaining:

A roundup of sorts.

Firstly, if the text on this blog is too small for you to read easily, hold ctrl and + or - until it is better. This seems to me far easier than the horrors of tweaking the code.

Now then:

1. There is a skeeling in the house! Dad's sketches, and work jumper; the front door key, my epic kirby grip stash, and one of the telephones, have just walked. I kinda hope they're all together somewhere, contributing to some fantastical machine.

2. Settled down to watch, at long last, City of Vice - the TV show about the Bow Street Runners. Despite being set in the 1750s, and starring Iain Glen, it is not the greatest thing ever, as I'd hoped. Instead sort-of frustrating, proving that there's little separating police procedurals, no matter how elegantly dressed. It's obviously cheap, and trying hard to be edgy - and we could forgive both, but it's padded out with lazy scriptwriting. If I never have to see another Dead Whore (TM), it'll be too soon - fictionally speaking, that's all prostitutes are there for. To be killed, unpleasantly. We Know You're In London, We Know You're In The Past, but what right have they to invent serial killing some 150 years early? Like all movies with a historical basis, I'd like some solid information on exactly how accurate it is. I may not bother seeing a second episode. I don't know. I am sure it won't turn into the show I want it to be, but maybe it's worth a try.

3. I love Hamlet. And found this marvellous blog, which makes me rather wish I had got there first. It makes me think, though: I have still never seen a great Ophelia. Not one I've entirely bought. I believe she is an impossible role to play - no backstory, no development, easy to be too cute, easy to reinvent badly as kickass.

4. I've started considering charging a nominal amount for charity Tarot readings. Why not? It's fun, and for a good cause. I've been practicing on people around me - mostly TV shows, it must be said - but Friend 2 has accused me of doing some dubious stuff like attempting to read her reactions, which intrigued me because it wasn't conscious. With that in mind, I sat down and read the book on cold reading, and was astonished to discover how many of their techniques I already use, just on reflex. Including the Skeptic's Gambit: "No, I Don't Really Believe This, But It's Useful For Psychological Investigation, Like A Rorschach Test". That was the one that really stood out, but a lot of their examples are almost verbatim things I've said.

I can't work out whether to change my game or not. There are two ways this can go. I can become a "proper Tarot reader" of sorts, and I'd want to deliberately not cold read in the name of accuracy and justice. Or I can become a Mentalist/Derren Brown type of performer, in which case I'd want to cold read the hell out of people. It'd always be for fun, of course, just a party trick - but I feel I should pick one or the other and stick with it. I suppose I'll go for the former, as you can't cold read friends - that destroys the point. But after this investigation, I am far more concerned about the ethics full stop, even in a fun context.

5. I have now bought several items of costume for That Blake Costume I'm Not Making. And thinking about the reboot has made me think, why not just do a gender-swap version? And making a sign reading "Starring Katie Sackhoff as Blake" - Katie Sackhoff being the gal who kickstarted this Edgy Reboot With Male Characters Recast As Women thing in Battlestar Galactica. It'd be geekily funny too. With that in mind, fashion advisors, here is a two-page gallery of options - which costume should I go for? Which has the greatest chance of actually suiting me?

6. Token cooing, skip this if you're really bored. You probably should be, I've been doing this for a year now - but it's OK, I've only got four days of it left. Then it's just aftermath, recovery and almost certainly moving on to something else, just as irritating...but frankly, I can't believe I saw what I just saw, I can't believe it's taken quite this long and I can't believe I can still be shocked. There was a point about a season back when I experienced a kind of darkness overdose. They hit us with a very cruel triple whammy that almost bounced off, I'd got so resigned. There are a whole bunch of blog updates, I know, expressing the same sentiment, and several episodes I remember feeling strongly "I know this show began with a betrayal, massacre, legal shenanigans, mental conditioning, all implied twice over, plus the destruction of three kids, but somehow this has just got worse".

In short, I am having a fantastic time - not sarcastic, totally genuine. Obsessions always feel like the One True Obsession, but I have been proud and honoured to be a B7 fan. As you're probably aware from my almost constant wittering. And long may it remain, however bad it has yet to get, because I'm very upset, but also overjoyed that it has stayed of such high quality, and committed to it's unique tone that it can still regularly do this to me. With that in mind, we came up with a few new theories:

16. The Final Girl, possiby Vila

17. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off getting on very well, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence, and go off into the sunset to fight the baddies together. Variation on Glimmer Of Hope from last week, but I really really like this one and feel it's within the bounds of possibility. Even had this one in a dream last night.

Likely variation:

18. Blake (who is fine) meets up with Avon again, and they pick off where they left off squabbling and tearing chunks out of one another's morality, especially because of the experiences they've had in one anothers absence which has left them completely incompatable. Hilarity ensues, and it's worse than usual.

7. I have lost my love for the piano. I'm - a bit floored, to be honest. My method has always been to play for my own delight, damn practice, damn everything else. But I have recently become aware of a) not being very good at all, and b) that this matters to me. That playing and being good make me happy. I'm trying harder, getting nowhere, and it's begun to be stressful.

Consequently, I have at long last abandoned Fantasie Impromtu as something I will never be able to play, to see if it deflates my newfound competitive streak. Fantasie Impromptu has been part of my life for such a long time, and unlike most of the things I try playing, it's actually harder than it sounds. I can basically do both hands individually, with breaks, and know in time I could play them both at once, but it's my own body defeating me. By the end of the first page - the first 20 seconds - my left hand (which hasn't had a break) cramps and loses it's dexterity; by halfway through the second page - some 10 seconds later -my right hand follows suit.

Giving up on it feels very strange indeed, because it's the first time I've admitted a limitation on that machine. I taught myself to play on Firth of Fifth and Chopin Nocturnes, songs which no beginner should touch. But I learnt them stubbornly, one note at a time, and kept at it, and after a while I could do 26-note runs and trills. Made me feel quite invincible, and informed my style ever since: "What do you mean I can't play that? Let me wade in and bash!" So I've been trying hard and regularly at Impromptu, to see if I can't get my wrist strength up. As if it would make a difference, as if I don't spend somewhere between one and four hours on the piano a day, as if I wasn't an archer-turned-poimistress. And what I discovered was actually, if I keep trying hard enough - my wrist just gives up and stings, and I'm sure, eventually sprains.

I feel like I've killed my own child.

This too will pass.

8. Finally, to end on a positive note, I'm taking part in a swap which merely requires participants to read their partners profile, and leave a comment. Quick, but cute. Anyway, one noted:

"I really enjoyed reading about your likes and you seems so interested in everything. That you love life and just enjoys the little things. "

It's fascinating how you come across on paper, and the weird thing is reading it written down momentarily made it true. I felt like I became this person. Or maybe I always have been.